Tarotscopes – July 2017

Soul-Smart Monthly Tarotscopes by Star Sight Tarot

This month you may be asked to cultivate a level of precision and logical thinking that doesn’t always come easily to your dreamy sign. The Mother of Swords in The Wild Unknown tarot—the Queen of Swords in more traditional decks—is represented by an owl, perched on her sword and staring intently forward. Is there something you’ve been wanting to make happen lately, but maybe haven’t been able to find your way forward on? This card suggests that you’ll have a newfound sense of clarity and vision to move ahead with your goal. The Mother of Swords is a plan maker, able to see with her night vision things that others don’t, which allows her to craft the best possible route forward. She knows when to wait and gather more information and when to act swiftly. You can call on her when you are feeling a little unsure or lost in the reeds. Adopt her perspective by rising above the confusion on the ground and looking at things from a bird’s-eye view. Sometimes we need to look at our lives with a little distance in order to see things more objectively. That way we can avoid being mired down in the waters of emotionality or the muck of conflicting values and ideas. Sometimes with a little logical thinking, what seemed impossible suddenly appears to us with a new level of simplicity and ease. It’s more often than not our own negative thinking that clouds our vision and makes things seem more challenging than they really are. Let the energy of the owl assist you in manifesting clear, calm thinking, so that you can bring your dreams into the material plane.

You can breathe a sigh of relief now, Aries. It is finally time to lay down those burdens you’ve been carrying. Did you think you’d have to shoulder them forever? You’ve been asked to do so much lately—juggling obligations, taking on more and more responsibility. At a certain point, it becomes too much for any one person to realistically handle. Your sign has been known to have an overdeveloped superego, which sometimes keeps you from saying no to things that will end up taking too much energy without bringing you enough in return. Now is the time to let some of those obligations go. Take a long hard look at all of the commitments that are taking up your time now. Where could you stand to cut back? Where could you insert some more self-care time into your schedule? The Ten of Wands in its reversed position tells you that you’ll have some help from the universe in scaling things back this month. Let yourself soak up some of the deep glowing warmth of the summer. Think back to summer vacations when you were a kid and try to bring some of that carefree energy to your days, whether it’s a trip to the beach, a popsicle on the back porch, a game of cards with friends, creating an art project, or anything else that evokes a sense of freedom and serenity for you. Try to carve out a few hours a week of unstructured time where you can just see where your whims take you. It is so essential for our mental health to let the inner child out to play now and again. But it’s up to you to make it happen!

Alright, Taurus. I know how you love to put your shoulder to the wheel and get things done. You have a remarkable amount of stamina and you are freakishly good at pretty much anything you decide to devote your time to. The bull associated with your sign is famous for its work ethic and its ability to accomplish what many others just physically can’t. But this month the cards are asking you to ease up on the reins a little bit. You’ve been working so hard to get everything in place in your life—career, house, relationships, etc.—which is all important of course, but it’s also a lot to try to manage at the level of effort and quality with which you are accustomed to doing things. It may be that the deeper motivation for all of your efforts is a desire for a kind of security that is actually impossible to ensure. Try instead to shift your perspective to seeing your work as enabling you to actually to be able to enjoy your life. What would happen if you didn’t try so hard to do everything perfectly for a little while? What if you gave yourself a break and let yourself get a little sloppy now and then? The spider depicted in the Eight of Pentacles spins its magnificent web day in and day out, and while it may appear to be a perfect pattern, it’s actually full of flaws, as is anything in nature. That doesn’t make it any less spectacular, or useful, or valuable. But it does allow you to take some of the pressure off of yourself to do everything to such a degree of perfection that you wear yourself out with the effort. Make sure you leave yourself some energy to reap the benefits of all of your hard work.

This month is all about growth for you, Gemini. You’ll be stretching yourself in some new directions, looking for new opportunities to create and manifest your ideas and talents. The Six of Pentacles indicates a time of abundance, which lets you not only expand your own horizons but also extend your time, labor, and resources to others who need it. This might not mean literal financial wealth, but it certainly suggests adopting a mindset of abundance by cultivating gratitude for all that you have in your life. Daily gratitude is a powerful spiritual practice which allows us to get out of the negative loops in our minds and look outward to those around us who are in need. In fact, this may be the key to living a life of meaning and purpose. By seeking out ways of giving to others, by finding new channels for our energy and our skills, we allow ourselves to grow into new shapes and to experience new things. If we resist that kind of change or try to hoard our time, money, and talents for ourselves, we end up withering rather than growing. It isn’t easy to extend ourselves and change always comes with a certain amount of loss, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you find yourself a little slow to get out there or if something you decide to try doesn’t end up working out. It’s all part of the bizarre dance of being a human on this planet. Everything operates by trial and error, and just when you think you’ve got something down, things change and it no longer seems to work. That’s why it’s so important to be flexible and to see it all as a necessary part of our growth. The rewards you will reap from shifting your state of mind in this way are far beyond anything you could retain by holding onto the status quo.

Happy Birthday, Cancer! July is your time to revel in all the juicy goodness of the summer season. Your card this month, the Ace of Swords reversed, tells you not to worry so much about having everything all figured out right now. As a crab, Cancers have an interesting dual nature: you can be hard as nails when you need to be, not letting anything through that ironclad exterior. But you also have a super soft side—a sweet vulnerability and playfulness that you let out to play when you feel safe and relaxed. My sense is that lately you’ve been pushing hard towards some major goals and have started to feel like your soft underbelly will never see the light of day. Well, I hope that during your birthday month, you can let down your guard a little bit and find some ways to expose your more vulnerable side. The thing is, while the spiky side of you has an amazing capacity to get shit done, your soft side is just as (if not more) integral to who you are. Without giving it a little time and attention, you can start to lose touch with that big beating heart that makes you you. It can be scary to let that part of yourself show because it is a little messy and there is a capacity for big feelings to be let loose that you aren’t sure you want everyone to see. But by letting others see your vulnerabilities, you actually give them permission to be messy and vulnerable themselves. And most importantly, you let them get to know the real you, which is the only way to truly connect on an authentic level.

After all the transformative work you’ve been doing this past month, you can finally take a minute to step back and look at how far you’ve come. The Seven of Pentacles is about planting seeds, cultivating them, and then seeing which ones take root. It can sometimes be scary to declare an intention and start putting energy towards it because we don’t know if it will take off and flourish or not. What if I put everything I have into this and it fails? What if everyone finds out that I don’t really have what it takes to make this happen? These are some of the unhelpful voices that can sometimes keep us from starting down a new path or admitting to ourselves that we really want something. But the thing is, we have only so much control over how things develop, and if it doesn’t work out this time, it may just be that the timing was off or the conditions weren’t quite right. It doesn’t constitute a failure on your part, nor does it mean you shouldn’t keep trying. In fact, failure, loss, and setback are all perfectly normal and necessary parts of the process of creation. And you might even find when you look more closely that what you thought was a failure actually contains something valuable within it. What did you learn from trying that thing out, even if you didn’t get the outcome you had hoped for? What did it bring you? Can you apply what you’ve learned to your next endeavor? I bet there is a lot more for you to reap from what you’ve planted than you may at first realize.

Your card this month is the Father of Swords reversed, suggesting a need to pull back on your tendency to overthink everything. You tend towards the logical and you can be painstakingly precise in your thinking, which is why people rely on you to do an excellent job with whatever you put your mind to. But this aspect of your personality doesn’t always serve you. Sometimes it can be downright detrimental! We can’t have our thinking caps on all the time or we start to experience our world as though it were only a series of logical puzzles, and the entirety of our existence a thought experiment. What’s wrong with this, you ask? Well, for one thing it keeps you so firmly ensconced in your head that you forget to nurture the other parts of yourself—heart, spirit, body—that are necessary not only for survival, but also for the enjoyment of your surroundings. If you are busy analyzing every experience, it becomes pretty much impossible to really be in the present moment. Take a minute to try and shut your brain off a little and just notice the sensations in your body: the way the breeze feels on your arm, the sunlight hitting your skin, even hunger or pain. Try not to disassociate from the feelings that come up and just let yourself feel them without judging them as good or bad. If you have a meditation practice, or used to, now’s the time to double down on your commitment to quieting the mind and really living into each moment as it comes. It’s finally summer! Let these exercises help you to enjoy the long days and soak up some sweet silence. You deserve it.

This month sees you embarking on a spiritual journey, Libra. Whatever things you thought were going to bring you happiness or satisfaction (represented by the broken cups in your card) turn out to be ultimately unfulfilling because they are only material in the end. True fulfillment lies on the spiritual plane, something which you already know or sense, but maybe haven’t been doing everything you can to live out. This is the perfect time for you to pack a literal or metaphorical bag and detach yourself a bit from the mundane so that you can remember what this absurd, painful, beautiful life is really about. This isn’t always an easy journey to make because with it comes an acceptance of some of the harder truths we humans have to face—impermanence, loss, death. But facing those truths is part of living truthfully and authentically rather than numbing out to whatever balm you have chosen for yourself that day (whether it’s Netflix, alcohol, cat videos, or juicy novels…). Meditating on the connectedness of all things is a powerful way to step into that spiritual plane and mitigate some of the pain of impermanence. If all things are connected, then any one loss is not the end of all things. It is part of the ebb and flow of the whole organism that is Life. See if you can tap into that flow this month by taking a good look around and getting clear on what it is you truly need in your life and what is just filling the void. If you can, make more time for the things that bring you closer to your humanity and to appreciating the miracle of our lives on earth.

This month, Scorpio, your card is the Nine of Wands reversed, which depicts a ladder of branches that leads up to the moon. In its reversed or upside down position, the ladder takes you down, not up. The moon itself is often a symbol of the subconscious—the bearer of reflected light, rather than the direct light of the Sun—so it makes sense in a way to descend towards it instead of ascending. This card calls you into a deep reckoning with the soul, which as a Scorpio you should already be quite familiar with! This is usually your happy place, even when the things you encounter there are scary or dark, because you ultimately know that by facing them, you begin to divest them of their power over you. What shadows have you left unexplored lately? Is there something that has been nagging at you from deep down? Perhaps showing up in dreams, or moments of meditation? Let yourself go deeper if you feel that it’s safe for you to do so, through journaling or even a shamanic journey if that’s something you’re into. This summer month is a great time to start churning that deeper soil to see what gets unearthed. You may be surprised to find that something bright and gleaming gets uncovered in the process that isn’t so scary after all. In fact, it may be the key to unraveling your suffering so that you can begin the process of turning towards the sun.

How has your emotional life been lately, Sagittarius? This month you’re being asked to explore your relationship to your emotions in ways that may be challenging, but that if you’re up for it, will ultimately be enriching and even downright transformative. The Father of Cups is the king of the cups, the emotional water suit, and unlike the other cups court cards, he has learned to master his emotions without letting them take over and wreak havoc on his life and relationships. What is your current status with regards to a similar kind of mastery? Does it seem that your emotions are something that “happen” to you and you are taken along for the ride? Or have you developed some tools to help you weather whatever storms come along with a little bit more grace and ease than maybe you had when you were younger? Wherever you are on this spectrum (and most of us are somewhere in the middle), be sure that you are putting some effort this month into accessing the calm and collected energy of this card whenever possible, through whatever means you’ve found to work for you. Try identifying the particular triggers that you know tend to set you off and do what you can to prevent those from happening. Are you extra emotional when you’re tired or hungry? Is right before bed maybe not the best time to have discussions on sensitive topics with your partner? Brainstorm a few possible preventative measures you can take, whether it’s meditating in the morning, having snacks in your bag at all times, or taking a ten-minute time out when you first get home from work and tensions and emotions often run high. The work you do in anticipating and managing your emotional ebbs and flows will go a long way in improving not only your own outlook on life, but also the way that the people you care about relate to you. If you are calm, it gives them permission to fall apart a little which may be exactly what they need.

Your card this month is a complex one, Capricorn. The Seven of Cups shows us a world where it is unclear which way is up and which is down, a bit like in Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps you’ve been dreaming about a particular thing that you have built up in your mind as the answer to all of your problems, whether it’s a relationship, a job or raise, a house or change in residence, winning the lottery, etc.. Whenever you find yourself saying, As soon as this happens or I get this thing, life will be better, you know you are in Seven of Cups territory. Take a minute to really examine whatever that thing is that seems like the key to your happiness. Does it really have the kind of power you are ascribing to it? Or is it possible that once you obtain it, you’ll find a different reason for your dissatisfaction? The cups that seem to hold so much promise in this card are really only illusory and tell us that what we are seeking can only be found by taking inventory of our internal landscape and making some needed changes on how we perceive ourselves and our world. It is human nature to always want more, but our spirits are capable of finding satisfaction and joy even in what may appear to be challenging circumstances on the material level. Your mantra this month: The riches I seek are found within.

You’ve been on a soul journey lately, Aquarius. The lessons you are learning now are part of your greater personal and spiritual development and thus have significance on a deeper level than what might appear on the surface. Some of these lessons may come with a certain amount of confusion and difficulty—last month in particular saw you grappling with themes of attachment, making great strides in how you relate to the material world and the people and objects in it that you are attached to. It may not feel like you are making that much progress at the moment, but you truly are. This month’s card, The Moon reversed, is a sign that any confusion or cloudiness that has surrounded you and your path lately will soon give way to a newfound clarity. The obscurity that can accompany this kind of journey into the shadowy subconscious realms will begin to dissipate, leaving you blinking in the bright sun of a new morning. Right now it is still not clear what that new clear perspective will reveal to you, but it promises to be instrumental in shifting some of those deep-rooted patterns that have had a way of keeping you stuck. Whatever bumps you may encounter this month, take comfort in knowing that they are a necessary element in the larger tapestry that is your life. One day, you’ll have enough distance from it to see the picture that is being created. Right now you are too close to it, but you can have faith that it is nothing short of a work of art.

Kate is a tarot reader, writer, academic, and founder of Star Sight Tarot. She believes that the tarot has great transformative power and can give us deep insight into our lives, our patterns, and our choices. Tarot has been instrumental in her own journey of personal development and she loves bringing its gift of guidance to her clients. Visit StarSightTarot.com for more.

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1 Comment

Jennifer
on July 11, 2017 at 4:16 pm

Thanks for this! I love the linking of tarot and astrology but especially the use of the Wild Unknown deck. (I LOVE this deck and have been doing a daily card for almost two years now.) The card for Scorpio could not be more spot on for me. I look forward to next month’s card!